RV maintenance

I’m kind of torn between wanting to update this frequently, and not wanting to post nothing but dog training. Currently I am working with the puppy (now named Rowan) every day, but have not been working much on the RV, so I feel like that’s all I’d be doing. The puppy is learning and doing better. Not reacting as much, but still has obvious issues. She wants to eat the cats, has not learned the art of “Quiet” very well yet, and does still react to my roommate and one of his friends (although that also seems to be improving). I don’t think I mentioned this, but she did nip my roommate’s friend a couple weeks ago. He was one of the people she tried to bite when she was new here. She’s taken quite a while to get over her issues with my roommate, and she’s still not there 100%, so I figure it’s going to take quite a while for her to get over her issues with this friend, because she doesn’t see him as often. He had been over to visit, and it was the first time she’d seen him since the day he kept trying to pet her after she’d warned him to leave her alone and she snapped at him. So this time, she ran up to him, and he reached down quickly to cover himself, and it spooked her. She jumped back away from him, then jumped back in and nipped his pant leg. It was closed-mouthed, and she just pinched a tiny bit of the jeans, but it was still very upsetting for me. I am not sure if she went in with the intent to bite in the first place, or if she only decided to bite once she got spooked. It happened too quickly. So I’ve been wary of letting her near him ever since. She needs to get over her issue with him, because he comes over frequently, and I’d rather not play interference. He is very sad that she doesn’t like him because he loves dogs, and wants to be her friend. She’s seen him twice since the nip, and did not try to bite him either time, although she was not comfortable with him either time. The second time she saw him was today, when I was outside working on my RV. He was carrying a computer, and she barked and barked at him as he walked through the yard, then circled him, sniffing the air around him, and then turned her attention to my roommate, who was leaving the house behind his friend. I thought it was pretty ballsy of the friend to walk through the yard with her loose out there. I don’t know why he didn’t tell me he was coming so I could grab her, but I was relieved that she didn’t try to attack him.

On our walks, she has been pretty good. Definitely needs improvement in just about everything, but she isn’t reacting to cyclists, runners, skateboarders, or strangers with insanity anymore. Some people she is wary of, and will cross behind me to walk on the opposite side as they pass, then she wants to sniff the air behind them. Most people she walks calmly past and (mostly) ignores though. She gets treated for all good behavior around strangers. People she’s met before and had good interactions with, she is a crazy excited puppy toward when we run across them again. Lots of new people passing seem to see her and want to make friends, since she still looks like a puppy. Most of them she is shy with, stepping back from their outstretched hands, then she steps back in and licks them or lets them pet her, and then instantly turns away from them (if they are someone she is unsure of), to direct her attention back to me, because I give her tons of praise and treats for good interactions with strangers, or she jumps all over the place like a complete lunatic 6-month-old puppy (if they are someone she’s decided she really digs).

I’ve been trying to only have good interactions with dogs as well, but they’re such wild cards. You never know what you’re going to get as people are approaching you. Yesterday I was walking my usual route when suddenly there was a loose dog on the sidewalk. A little Pit-Hound looking mix. The owners saw me coming, their dog was off leash, and they acted like everything was fine. And then the dog approached Kedric with all raised hair, passed him by to get to Rowan, and then proceeded to growl at her and try to jump on her (twice). WTH? Why would you let your dog approach strange dogs if he has aggression issues? NOT the experiences I’m looking for with a fearful pup! We have had some good experiences with larger dogs, but for the most part, she’s pretty scared around them, until they get to know each other well… And who has times to sit and let dogs get to know each other as you’re passing someone on a walk? But little dogs she LOVES. She goes all crazy for them, and wants to play, and I have to hold her back, because I don’t want her to jump on them and hurt them. She likes to play tag with Stella, the little Chi-something that lives in our apartments, and she REALLY wants to play with Sam, the Jack/Rat mix, but he’s an old man, so he doesn’t put up with her shenanigans for long. So at least I know, for my own references, that she needs more exposure to good-natured, well-trained larger dogs.

So basically, I’ve been doing nothing but eat, sleep, shower, work, and dog training for the last month. My brain is tired. I need a serious vacation from work, some kind of recovery period. It also sucks because I can never let my guard down with this pup. Today, as I was leaving the back yard, she slipped out before I could grab her, and was intent on not being caught. Scary moments, for sure. When she’s in the house, the only place she can be off-leash is in my room. The door has to be closed because she flies over the large baby gate like a Grand Prix horse… Or should I say she used to, until she crashed the gate trying to get to one of the cats, and broke it in half. Until she is trustworthy with the cats, the roommate, and recalls, she cannot be let off leash outside of my room though. So I’m pretty much thinking she’ll probably be on leash in the rest of the house until we move into the RV. Which is a pain in the ass. When I take a shower, she has to go in her kennel, because I can’t trust her to not chew shit up, and I can’t leave her outside in the yard, because I view her as a liability (and don’t trust people to keep the gate closed). I’m just getting to the point where I will SOMETIMES leave her out of the kennel for a couple hours in the morning, after she’s went out to potty, and before I’m ready to get out of bed, but I can’t sleep well then, because I’m constantly checking to see what she’s into. She is the BIGGEST pain in the ass.

So I’ve been looking into trainers with different philosophies online. Basically, I am an eclectic kind of girl, and I like trainers who are the same way. There are a whole lot of training methods I look at as either evil, or completely unrealistic. I need to find a happy medium. I just ordered some Michael Ellis DVD’s. Expensive as hell, but I really dig him. The more I see of him, the more I like him. He makes sense. He has great energy, and gives the dogs the benefit of the doubt, treating every one as an individual. Highly skilled marker trainer, but also believes that it’s okay to tell your dog when they’re doing something wrong, rather than ignoring it and hoping your dog figures out the right way. Let’s be honest, folks. I don’t have 20 years for my dog to decide that she’d rather not do the things I don’t want her doing. I may be wrong (I’m not), but I’m pretty sure that Border Collies are considered the smartest breed in the world. So I’m pretty sure my dog understands when I say, “Hey, I don’t like that behavior,” and she isn’t going to be in mortal fear of me the rest of her life. I can disagree with behaviors without the relationship that I have with my dog bursting into flames. Really, who thinks this shit up? (Maybe they just have ultra-sensitive dogs that they’ve over-corrected?)

I despise clicker training. Don’t get me wrong – I think marker training is AMAZING. But the clicker itself drives me nuts. I could NOT listen to that damn thing all day. Maybe my hearing is just sensitive, but clickers seem SO loud to me, and who has the extra hand for that? I have a bag of treats on one hand, and a crazy, reactive dog in the other. I am not an octopus. I can hear people using a clicker a block away from my house. Dogs have amazing hearing. Who designed these things to be so damn loud?? So I love marker training philosophy, and will stick with it, because it is undeniably the best training method out there, but until I start to go deaf, you will never see me using a clicker. I will also continue to tell my dog, “Nope, that’s not right”, and I roll my eyes at the people who say that is a terrible mistake. Maybe they’ve never owned a dog with such a high-functioning brain?

Anywho, yeah. So this is my brain lately… Dog training, dog issues, dog reactivity, what we need to work on next, what skills need improved on, what tools I need to have for the next step, etc. It gets pretty boring, believe me. There are days I’d rather just sleep all day, and maybe read a book later. But time is critical. Rowan just turned 6 months, and I feel like the closer she gets to adulthood, the harder it’s going to be to change her innate reactions, and fear-based behaviors. So for now, my brain is in doggie overdrive, and dammit, I’m tired.

The winter is supposed to be officially rolling in… oh, 36 minutes ago. We’re supposed to have a day-and-a-half-long snowstorm to kick things off. So I got the dogs walked this morning, then finished sealing almost every seam I had left on the RV (there are like 3 things that need redone, but nothing that some rain or snow could hurt), then put the tarp on top. I still haven’t gotten around to resealing the roof. I need a skinny person to hop around up there for me for that project, and all the skinny people I know have been busy, so it will probably just have to wait until spring. But the tarp is on, so I’m not so concerned about that.

When Em was here last, we tried to figure out what the deal with the washer fluid was. All the tubes seem to be in decent shape, and there is some suction in the tubes… just not enough to generate fluid spraying onto the windshield. Rather than bother with tearing shit apart that I know nothing about, I’m probably just going to take it in and have it fixed. Maybe the motor is dying. Or maybe there is a pinched or cracked line somewhere down in the engine compartment. I don’t know.

So I have to get the washer fluid fixed, get it inspected/licensed/registered, and I’m considering reupholstering the cushions to make them a color I like (and because the top bunk upholstery is falling apart in the center, where people have slid off the bed). Then a tune-up and oil change and whatever other basics I need, and she’ll be good to go.

I have a list of the things I am going to need while on the road that has been on my computer for years, and I am just now starting to go through it and color code everything, so that I will know what I have, what I need more of, and what I don’t have at all. It’s pretty exciting. 🙂 I brought in my emergency bags tonight so that I could go through them and make lists of what was in them, so I will know what I need to add into them… I do like to be prepared. 🙂 (Girl Scout for life!!) (Yes, I’m a nerd.) 😀

I tried to get a happy family picture the other day when I was raking leaves in the back yard… Here’s how that turned out. (Kedric’s face says it all).

And here’s Flash with the tarp on, ready for winter!

And until I can really get on the ball with my exercise program, I’m not even going to bore you with the details. Been so busy with this crackhead puppy that my exercise routine has been put on the backburner. But that’s temporary, I swear! 🙂

Whoa, okay. So that absence was unexpected. The lowdown of the hoedown is…

I can’t even remember what I was doing the first week of my absence here, but I’m SURE it was something amazing (okay, maybe not). I then got sick because… well, germs. And inconsiderate people. And then I got a puppy.

I couldn’t find what I was wanting through rescue. Every dog I seemed to like had aggression issues. And I have a roommate, and he has two cats. So bringing home a dog with aggression issues didn’t feel like something I could take on, while being a considerate roommate. I considered waiting another 6 months for a puppy from a breeder who would be having a litter I really wanted a pup from, but that would then be a full year of Kedric being alone. And honestly, at this point, getting a puppy was mostly for him, because he’s been so lonely. I figured we could get over the annoying stuff now, so he could enjoy his retirement with a well-trained companion.

So there was a breeder nearby whose dogs I really like. Her males are all eye tested, and she’s working on getting all her breeding stock hip tested, which is more than I can say for the majority of the breeders out there… And she had a pup that I’d been checking out since she was little, but was never sure about… She also had a pup last year that I really loved, but didn’t go get because it was a boy and I knew I’d be wanting a girl next. And I saw how gorgeous that dog turned out, and I feel like I missed out on a good thing there. So rather than waiting until this pup had been picked up by someone else, or until she was a year old and I was kicking myself, I decided to go for it.

I went out a week ago, and we talked, and I decided that I was for sure taking the pup home, so money and paperwork changed hands, and I had myself a new dog. She was a dream the whole (very long) car ride home, and was fine that night in her crate… And then the next day came. And my adorable puppy turned into a lunatic. She had lived the first 4 1/2 months of her life in the country. Not much happens out there. She had no exposure to skateboards, bicycles, runners, traffic – nothing. The breeder suggested I just let her chill and get used to me, but I couldn’t just leave this high-drive puppy locked in a kennel for 8 hours while I was at work without burning off some of her energy, so I started taking her on walks in the morning. She is super reactive and fearful. Within a couple days, she had tried to bite my coworker, my roommate (twice), and his best friend. Everything was freaking her out. Strangers and children were not on her happy list. Pretty much everything was triggering her. I figured it was basically just sensory overload. Over-stimulation triggering just extreme fight or flight reactions.

I was a wreck the first few days, thinking that I’d finally made a decision to bring this dog home, thinking it was the best thing for all of us, and I’d bought a psychopathic biting machine instead. So I did what I do best, and got online to research things. Fearful dogs. Reactive behavior. Fear aggression. On and on… Hours of videos and papers about training. Some articles said that since she was older than 3 months, she would never be “normal” again. Some articles talked about how BAT had turned their own nutjobs into normal, sane dogs. I was just frustrated that I could have picked up an aggressive rescue for a fraction of the price, and instead I paid more for an aggressive puppy from a breeder. Of course, she was sane when I picked her up, because she was in her own familiar environment. So to me, the problem was twofold: that she’d never been socialized, and that she was being exposed to everything at once. But I can’t pick and choose what she is exposed to in the city. I never know when I will run into a longboarder or a sprinter. It’s the luck of the draw. I am not going to the park. We are walking on quiet streets. But everything is still so new to her.

So I started doing some modified BAT with her. I can’t turn and walk the other way every time someone approaches or we would never get our walks completed. So I step off the sidewalk, far enough away that she isn’t feeling too triggered, and she gets rewarded when she breaks contact with the trigger and checks in with me. I’m allowing her to check out the things that scare her, rather than continuing to make her walk with me, because I feel like in order for her to stop reacting when she sees things, she needs to have come to a conclusion about whether or not they are scary in the past. It seems to be working. I let her investigate the scary things (some things I have to approach myself, and then lure her to them with a treat), and then she’s like, “Oh, just kidding… It was only a garbage can,” or whatever. And then the next scary thing we run into, she is like, “Oh, yep, seen that before.” Within 3 days, she was no longer reacting to scary Halloween decorations in yards along our route because I’d let her check them out, and then praise her when she looked relaxed and satisfied that they weren’t as scary as she first thought.

She has a remarkable memory, but she reminds me so much of Shannon in how she does things. She doesn’t care a WHOLE lot about treats. I mean, all puppies like treats, but they are not her driving force. She wants to see things. That’s what Border Collies do, they look at the world around them. There are commands that she already knows, that she will just brush me off on, because she just doesn’t give a shit that I’ve asked it of her. Just a hard-headed little shit. But when you have a treat and she wants the treat, the behavior you ask for is done in milliseconds. Within 3 days of moving in, she knew No, Let’s Go, Off, and Leave It. I taught her Sit in about 15 seconds. 24 hours later, after not having repeated Sit a single time in that many hours, she gave me the behavior the first time I asked for it. She’s smart as a whip, this one. Today we started on With Me. It’s more of a mouthful than Here, but I just really dislike how closely Here and Heel sound to each other. All my Borders have been able to tell the difference just fine, but I really want something that sounds different, so I’ll be phasing out Here (although I still let it slip from time to time, since it was Kedric’s command).

So I’ve really got my work cut out for me with this one. She has that typical headstrong bitch personality that Shannon had. I see it and it makes me smile at the same time I want to give her a shake for giving me the finger. What drove Shannon was not food, nor was it toys. It was love, and drive. The day after coming home, this puppy challenged Andy’s dog because it approached me for some pets, so I know she’s becoming attached already. It’s only a matter of time before I can turn that into something constructive, I think.

She hasn’t tried to bite anyone in the last 2 days, and she actually had positive interactions with two strangers today – women who she decided just out of the blue that she wanted to be buddies with. She also met and had good interactions with two dogs she did not know. She then had a not-so-positive interaction with Andy’s new dog, who comes from the same breeder. He was very excited to see her and wanted to sniff her girly region, and then play with her while she was rolling around on the lawn. She was not having either interaction, so she got reprimanded for her bad reactions. I don’t mind a lip curl or something to tell another dog she is not pleased with their actions, but snarling and trying to bite are both big no-nos. A snarl at the wrong dog can land her in the doggie ER, so she’s gotta learn to keep that attitude in check.

But with all good things come the bad… On Friday, she chewed up my phone charger cable. So I am without a phone until the new one arrives. Then the next day, she chewed my internet cable in half. $40 and two days later, the internet was up and going again. Then this morning she chewed the new cable in half. Rather than spend another $40 on a new cable, I spent the morning splicing cables and connecting each itty bitty wire in the CAT-5 line together one by one, and patching it all with a generous supply of electrical tape. I was beyond delighted when it actually worked. *lol* I knew that degree wasn’t worthless! 😛

So yeah, my mind is kind of exploding with puppy training crap. I can’t have a biter or a lunatic, so we’re working on lots of stuff, and my poor brain is spinning. But I was totally stoked today when she had the good interactions with the strange people and dogs. She even offered up the sit after a few go-rounds of me stepping off the path of strangers. “This is what you want, right? Hand me the hot dog!”

I have toys shredded all over my room. It looks like a plastic and stuffed animal massacre. I am beyond tired. It is like having an infant, needing out at crazy times of the night. I have already thrown at least 6 mangled toys away this week.

At the same time, I am trying to get back on the exercise wagon after being sick for like 2 weeks and doing nothing during that time. I also still have not finished the outside of the RV, and I want that done before the snow season hits (it has already snowed a few times, but not for long). I plan to finish the caulking tomorrow, and try to get the windshield washer fluid issue figured out. Then my friend Emily is coming out next week, and she is going to help me finish the roof. Once the roof is done, I have a tarp I want to put on it for the winter. It won’t cover the sides, just the roof, so I can continue to go in and out of it, working on random things throughout the winter – like getting the cushions reupholstered, and doing some basic cleaning. I was going to work on it this morning, but I ended up spending the morning on that cable, and then I had a City & Colour concert to go to tonight.

Wish the phone wasn’t dead, so I could share some pix or videos from the concert, but it is, so a few pictures of the new pup will have to do.

Here’s one the breeder took of her… Her eyes are two different colors currently, but look like they’re changing. Her right eye is currently gold on the top, and brown on the bottom. Her left eye is gold and has some green hazely thing going on.

Here she is, walking with Kedric. Their markings are kind of cool, I think. They have the same white shoulder, but their hips are opposites. She has a spot on her left hip, and a white streak up the right – he has a spot on his right and a streak up the left.

And here’s what she looks like when she’s being good: 😛

So there’s that.

And since it’s Monday, I suppose I’ll include this, to help get the ball rolling…

Starting weight: 272
Lost this week: Who knows?
Total lost: 20.6
Currently: 251.4

So I spent my birthday coating all the silicone bits on the RV with McKanica silicone remover. Two thumbs up for the silicone remover, and a big emoticon of displeasure and pokey sporks for the company I bought it from, which took almost 2 weeks to send it out.

The application of the silicone remover is… not fun, to say the least. It is called a “gel”, but it is more like old, half-dried toothpaste. It’s sticky and grainy, but unless you smash it onto a surface, it’s just going to fall off. The label said to “cover it immediately” after application… Um, what? I’m coating every seam on an RV, I’m not going to go around taping plastic wrap over it. So I just left it. So after hours in the sun, applying the stuff, I came back outside to this. It was somewhat alarming…

The stuff basically turns dark brown as it’s drying, and then white when it’s completely dry. I was worried about my paint, but when I scraped it all off, the silicone came off quite nicely (for the most part), and my paint was fine. I smoothed it on with a piece of cardboard, and I scraped it off with a plastic scraper. For any leftover residue, you just wipe it down with a dry cloth, and it comes right up.

Here is what the edges look like once done:

So compared to how the seams used to look, these are a dream!

Yesterday I had to then clean all the seams with denatured alcohol to remove any residue and clean the seams. Um, yeah, eek. They don’t warn you that the denatured alcohol acts (and smells) like fingernail polish remover, so if you scrub it when it’s on your paint, it will eat the paint off. I cleaned the rest of the seams as quickly and gently as possible.

Then I started on the caulking… That was interesting. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the caulk used for RV seams has a consistency like super-duper thick slime. It is super dense. It also turns tacky extremely fast, so if you want to form it or work with it, you have to get to it within seconds, or you’re going to have a mess on your hands. So after a couple seams, I had my technique down.

Here is my main window, all taped up and ready to go:

Here is my storage cubby with fresh caulk on the seams…

And for a novice, I think the seams are turning out quite nicely. I’m not completely done with it just yet, but wanted to update this blog on my progress before heading into work. I’ve been using my hands (wet & soapy) to smooth out the edges of the caulk. It starts to set up so quickly that I don’t think I’d have time to sit there with a tool and work it, so I’m satisfied with how they look (finger indents here and there, but pretty smooth, for the most part)…

I have the next two days off work, so I’m going to try to get the caulking finished then. The only annoying thing I’ve run into so far is that I did not use the denatured alcohol to clean the seams that did not have silicone remover on them, and after putting the caulk on those seams, I’ve realized that you can see some of the old dirty siding under it… It’s not a big deal, but the perfectionist in me grumbles a little bit at it. I figure if it drives me nuts later on, I can always just easily remove the caulking I just put on, and fix it. God knows I bought enough caulking! *lol*

And of course, Kedric is mightily disappointed every time I let him out the back door, and instead of going somewhere or taking a walk, we just work on the RV… Soon enough, though, we’ll be going places! 🙂

Same story today as every other… Anything that can go wrong will with this project, evidently.

I made an appointment to get the RV inspected today. Mentioned that the only thing stopping it from passing the last time were clearance lights. I do the driveway shuffle (moving cars out of the way to get the RV out) and drive to the inspection place. The guy walks out and looks at the RV and is like, “Oh… I’m going to have to reschedule you.” WHAT?! Apparently RV’s cannot fit into his shop, so he has to hook up a hose extension to do the emissions on them, and his hose has a hole in it, so he cannot do the emissions. I clearly stated that clearance lights were the issue last time. What the hell did he think I was driving, a VW Rabbit?? So I drove back home, and while waiting for my roommate’s friend to move his car out of the way, I turned the windshield wipers on because the window was dirty and LO and behold, the washer fluid doesn’t work. At that point I could have just cried. Two months ago, the technician who did the last inspection certified that the washer fluid worked. So what could have happened between then and now that it does not work? So I log online, where I find that there is virtually no info anywhere for a model of Flash’s age. So now I’m buying a Chilton manual which claims it will work for her, which will cost me $30 and not be here for God only knows how long… My silicone remover is in “shipped” status, but still showing no tracking info, so I know they haven’t actually sent it out yet, even though it was ordered over a week ago.

I’m just feeling very discouraged, and on days like this, I wonder if this is the universe trying to tell me something, or if this is just the story of my life.

At this point, I will only have 2 weekends left to get everything up and going before the trial, or I will not be taking the motorhome. And if that sealant remover doesn’t arrive ASAP, I’m just going to be screwed entirely.

So I have a sheepdog trial that I help with every year out in Soldier Hollow (Midway), Utah. The trial is all 4 days of Labor Day weekend, which is 3 weeks from now. The transmission is dead on my 4Runner, so my only real option at this point (unless I want to pay $1,500 to fix the 4Runner) is to go in the RV. My main goals before heading over the mountain are:

Re-caulk all the windows, doors, and seams

Re-caulk the seams on the roof, and then reseal the entire roof

Get it inspected

Get it licensed

Get it insured

Get the alternator tested

Get the oil changed

Get it a tune-up

Get my own driver’s license renewed

So I suppose that doesn’t seem like a whole crazy lot, but I essentially have 6 days off work between now and then to get it all completed. I wanted to get on the ball and get everything done ASAP, so I started on the caulking last week. I got probably 15 minutes into the job when I encountered THIS:

Let me just state here the #1 rule of RV maintenance: You do NOT put silicone on the outside, anywhere! Click on any RV maintenance page anywhere on the internet, and it will be one of the first things you see people warned about. And yet some person in Flash’s past liberally applied this crap all over the seams of this RV. When my little plastic paint scraper hit the first patch of silicone, I could NOT believe it. I just stood in disbelief, staring at it, dumbfounded. Did someone really…?! Is that seriously silicone?! Yes, boys and girls, silicone. And then I started checking out all the other seams and cracks, and found, to my horror, that it was everyyyyywhere. Grumbling and shaking my fist at the moron who dared do such a thing without doing their research first, I figured the only way to get it gone was to jump in head-first and tackle it. All the little pieces of silicone you see in the picture above are from me scrape-scrape-scraping. It comes up in little tiny balls, but doesn’t actually come off all the way.

In a few places I was lucky, and since the silicone-slatherer was lazy enough to just pour it over the old caulking, it didn’t really adhere, and just came off by pulling on the end. But as you can see, there is still residue left all over the side of the RV:

Kedric grew bored of watching me, and decided to take a nap in the shade while I scraped and scraped and scraped in 90*+ weather…

And then, out of nowhere, clouds rolled in, wind started blowing like a hurricane, and rain started to fall. Kedric quickly moved from his spot in the shade to inside the RV when the thunder started to rumble.

I figured I’d just keep scraping away and ignore the rain… until the thunder started cracking right over my head, and lightning started lighting up the sky. I’m determined, but not stupid, so I headed back in the house. Within minutes of coming indoors, the raindrops had turned into a downpour, and the thunder was shaking the house.

I got online to ask the RV experts what I should do about the silicone issue, and was told that unless I could get it 100% off, that the caulk I got would not stick, so it would essentially be pointless to try to caulk over it. I was offered a bunch of suggestions on how to get it off, and then the rain passed, so I went out to remove what caulk and silicone I could before the daylight ran out.

I found that the highest recommended silicone residue remover was available at Ace, so the next morning, Ked and I walked to the store. They were completely out, had none coming in on freight, and are the only store in the Salt Lake valley who carry it. *sigh* All the other recommendations I found had reviews online warning people that it would take the paint right off your vehicle. Eek. Thanks, I’ll pass!

I guess now can be the time where I mention that nothing has really gone according to plan up until now. I drove clear to the south end of the valley to Camping World only to find that they were out of everything I needed. In the middle of camping season, there was none of the caulk or roof seal that I needed in stock! WTH? So I had to order all of that from the internet. I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a new battery for the RV, and they were out of batteries. I went to AutoZone to get the battery instead, and ended up missing my turn for it and landing on a one-way street heading away from the store. Circled back around, and was told that I needed the exact van type, because they don’t carry motorhome models in their system. Went back home, dug through my info, and the closest I could come to a model type was “30 series”… So I went back to AutoZone, and he was like, “Okay, 30 series… What engine type?” ARGH! He said it would be in the VIN, so if I just brought the title in, they could tell. So I went home, got the title, and went back. Then they said, “Oh, this is a motorhome VIN, not a regular van VIN, and it doesn’t tell us the engine type.” I threw my hands up and questioned them about pros and cons of getting the wrong battery, then made an educated guess and went with the best damn battery they had. Luckily, and to my surprise, it fit perfectly. So now, when I need this silicone remover, I just have to laugh about the store being out of it. So I logged online and ordered that too. I hoped it would arrive by my next days off. But no. I ordered two custom dog tags for Kedric 2 days after I ordered the sealant remover. Those custom dog tags were made to order and sent to me, and I RECEIVED them (from two different companies!) before the company I bought the silicone remover from bothered to ship it. I just have to laugh though. Getting pissed isn’t going to make things happen any faster. I should receive the silicone remover before my days off next week though… Looks like this week is going to be spent getting it inspected, licensed, insured, and getting my own driver’s license renewed.

I feel at this point like it’s a good thing I’m flexible and not easily stressed out, or I would have thrown in the towel. I just have to keep rearranging the schedule for things to get done, and hope it all falls into place by the time I have to leave. Last year it poured and we had crazy electrical storms all four nights of Labor Day weekend, so I’d really just like to have my motorhome water-tight and good to go before I head out there this year. I really wouldn’t mind getting wet, but I can’t risk the water damage to the RV. It’s an adventure already!

The previous owners decided that she was a boy, and named her Flash. They had the emblem even put on the hood, lightning bolt and all. It makes me laugh.

You can see in the picture that some of the clearance lights along the front on the top are missing or mangled. They were the only thing preventing it from passing inspection. Everything on it seems pretty good. At some point in the past, there was water damage inside, but it’s been dry for a long time. Nothing inside is wet. We’ve been having some pretty good rainstorms this summer, and it doesn’t seem to have sprung a leak. It looks like someone previously coated the roof with some kind of roof seal, and it’s held up well. Someone also caulked along most of the seams on the outside with silicone (I’ll get to that in the next post), so none of the windows have been leaking either.

Something seems to be wrong with the battery or alternator. It will start right up, and then refuse to start minutes later. Then minutes later, it will start up just fine… I didn’t start it for a week, went outside, and it started right up. A month later I went out to start it and it was dead as a doornail. So I bought a battery, and Kyle and Andy came over and we installed that, and she started up better than ever. I’m going to take her into AutoZone to get a free test done to see if the alternator is the issue. I really hope the issue was just the battery, but who knows.

So first things first, I ordered some clearance lights from etrailer.com. Great lights, great service, great price. Two thumbs up there.

Had the lights in under a week, and Kyle came over to install them, since I don’t know jack about electrical, and I really don’t want to be the cause of my RV burning down.

We worked until well after dark getting them installed, but they look great (I didn’t think to take pix of the install until the sun had already set – duh). Here’s the finished product:

Things are coming together! Thanks, Kyle and Andy! 😀

Next up on the Flash to-do list is stripping all the exposed caulk from around the seams and re-caulking them all, as well as re-sealing the roof.